Scott's Articles

The start of the new year is a temporal landmark. Temporal landmarks allow us to reset and have a fresh start.  This is an excellent time to establish goals for yourself.

A big part of the success of achieving goals is our level of personal motivation.    There are two types of goals: ‘want to’ – goals that we deem are important to us and ‘have to’ – a goal someone else requires or expects.   The level of motivation is much higher for ‘want to’ goals as it fits into our values and identity and is essential to us.   With a ‘want to’ goal, you will be more conscious of the obstacles to achieving the goal and stay away from them.    

Many consider training a ‘have to’ goal as they feel the company mandates it.  For example, you may have received training on Leader Standardized Work (LSW).  A tactic for providing a better focus on ‘have to’ goals is trying to reframe the training, so it better fits your values and identity. For example, maybe one of your values is being a conscientious leader.  Executing the elements on your LSW may help you support this value.  Another strategy is to pair it with something more enjoyable, such as setting out an LSW task to engage more with your team members.  Finally, replace the goal of implementing LSW with something more meaningful for yourself that may accomplish the same. For example, you still follow the LSW format but use one of your LSW tasks to support a personal goal.   

Please let me know what you think.

How to navigate a curve         

When I first learned to drive, I was taught this very helpful technique on how to navigate a curve.

1. Brake in a smooth and controlled manner to reduce speed when approaching the curve. This will allow you to prepare and get a better understanding of the magnitude of the curve and what lies ahead.  
2. As the road comes into view (usually around halfway through the curve) begin to apply pressure to the accelerator to improve your grip on the road as you exit the curve to gain momentum.
3. Never brake, accelerate or steer sharply when moving through a curve as you will lose traction.  

The same techniques apply when we are trying to navigate change in our workplaces

1. Approach change slowly to start. Get an understanding of the magnitude of the change, the effort and the potential impact on both people and process.   Assess how organizational structures, interpersonal interactions and culture are going to react to the change.   

2. When the change and its impacts become more visible and you have a good understanding of how to navigate it, accelerate the rate of change.  Invest more in process and people to gain momentum with the new beginning and to achieve a clean start.

3. If you need to adjust along the way, make sure the adjustment is well thought out, deliberate and not reactive.  

Let me know your thoughts

Scott

I would like to congratulate our Front Line Leader Spring 2021 graduates.   We now have 20 more high performance leaders in the FLL alumni adding to 2000+ that are already alumni.   This group rose to the virtual challenge and has demonstrated that good leaders can develop in any environment.

With their graduation, I will pass on some wisdom by Peter Drucker on Leadership.  

The most important leadership decision you will make will be the decision to become a leader.   Acceptance of the responsibility to become a leader is important.   It means you must live with the fear of something going wrong.  You may be blamed for actions that may not be fully under your control.   It means living with the anxiety that followers may not follow you and that you may make the wrong decisions.    You may have to live with the embarrassment and penalties of failure.   

Many people who have the capability of becoming great leaders never accept this challenge.   They live with the fear that limits the success they may achieve and the contribution that might make by helping others.   The decision is yours to make.   

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thank you

Scott

Mary Kay Ash built the global cosmetic empire Mary Kay which is now a $3.25 billion company. (Some of you may recall Mary Kay’s signature pink Cadillac). 

She built the empire based on the following leadership and problem solving approach:

1. Follow the golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – in dealing with team members and employees.  If you help them get what they want, they will help you get what you want.

2. The people are more important than the plan.  Make them feel important, praise them, listen to them and let them contribute.  In return you will get their best efforts and their support.   Managers get their best ideas from their teams.

3. Manager must lead by getting their hands dirty.

4. Managers have a responsibility to their employees.  They must instill in their employees a sense of pride and pleasure in the work and try to provide a low-stress environment in which people can do their best.  All employees are called by their first names, regardless of title.

5. There are no ‘little people’ in the organization. Everyone is important to the organization’s success. (When Mary Kay was alive, she met personally will all new employees within the first month). 

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thank you

Scott

Today is the simplest tip ever – walk.

We are all facing anxiety right now – we are being overwhelmed with emails and information.  We are practicing new public health protocols. We are concerned about what our future looks like.  We can choose to sit and absorb it or we can do something very simple – go for a walk.  

We all know that walking burns calories and gets your heart rate up (which can’t hurt with our new Skip the Dishes habit). Walking has been proven to reduce stress and anxiety, especially if you walk in a natural or wooded area.  No special equipment or membership is needed.  You can walk anytime, anywhere - for a long period of time or just a few minutes for a break.

What you may not know is that walking also improves creativity.  A Stanford study shows that walking increases the supply of blood to the brain and that walkers perform better on creative thinking tests.  To illustrate this further some avid walkers included Aristotle, Charles Dickens, Ludwig von Beethoven, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. So while there are definitely physical health benefits from walking the mental health benefits are equally as important. 

Walking is a means for you to clear you mind, take a break, refocus, solve problems and come up with new ideas.  It is the easiest solution to help reduce the anxiety we are feeling both personally and professionally.

Start your new habit now while the fall weather is here.  You will feel the positive effects immediately.

Let me know your thoughts

Scott

‘Good is the enemy of great’ – Good to Great, Jim Collins. 

If we are already good, then why change?   We tend to react to crisis and take immediate action to lessen the impact or improve the situation (our current crisis is a prime example of this).  If things are ‘okay’ we tend to leave them. Why spend the effort if things are good?  What we may not realize is that not taking action has a cost.   

A typical first step of an improvement journey is to stabilize the way we do our work.  For example, a simple exercise in workplace organization will stabilize an area or process and help improve the ability to see abnormal conditions.   The ability to see abnormal conditions will allow for immediate problem identification and stop the problem from progressing. The first reaction - So what? We find the problems eventually, don’t we?   

Here is some quick math on the cost of not taking action.  What if not catching the problem right away results in additional time to contain and fix the problem?   What if that results in an additional 20 minutes in your day? (Most people spend more time than this daily just trying to find stuff).  When you do the math, 20 minutes daily results in 11 days over the course of a year.   If you have 100 people in your organization that experience problems, that could be up to 1100 days of lost capacity, not to mention the additional frustration and negative impact on your customers. 

Part of Continuous Improvement is having everyone identify improvements and take the step to implement the change.   What if we got everyone on our teams to identify and implement an improvement that could save 20 minutes a day?  Think of the cost if we don’t.        

Maybe things are not as ‘good’ as once perceived. Don’t let good be the enemy of great.

The difference between a manager and a leader is the decision based on one question,  ‘Do you want to be a leader?’.

This is not an easy decision to make.    What if something goes wrong? Will you get blamed for actions that are not fully under your control? What if people won’t follow you? What if you make the wrong decision?  Many would-be leaders are afraid of the embarrassment and difficulties of failure.  

People have the capability of becoming great leaders but never accept the challenge.   They go through life with a fear that limits the success they could achieve and the positive impact they could have on others.  

Remember, with the promotion to the position of a people manager, everyone starts equally as a would-be leader and faces the same fears.  Those that are successful make a conscious decision to be a leader. 

Transformational Leaders develop an environment where their team members create customer value,  find meaning in their work and grow in the process.

The first principle of Transformational Leadership is ‘you set the example’.   Your team will copy the behaviour you set. If you are positive, your team will try to be positive.  If you focus on the future, your team will try to focus on the future.  If you demonstrate a Continuous Improvement mindset, your team will try to demonstrate a CI mindset.  

In order to master the principle, it is critical to practice and to develop specific habits so that you can consistently demonstrate the behaviour.

I am inviting you to take the leadership habit challenge.   To help you attain your goal, we have created a leadership habit calendar.   You will find the calendar in our tools page.

To participate in the challenge, choose an example you want to set for your team that will demonstrate the principle.   Define the specific habit that you need to create for yourself. Use the calendar to help you develop the habit

Let me know what you pick.  Once you have completed 30 days, send me the results.

Good luck!

Scott

Peter Drucker is considered the leading management thinker of the last century.  He recommended that organizations do a self-assessment based on 5 key questions – What is your mission? Who are your customers? What do they value? What are our results? What is our plan?

We believe now more than ever, we need to help our teams focus on the future.  It is a great way to create a discussion with your team on how we can all contribute to our long-term success.  We developed a guide on how to use the questions for your own team.  

Check out Tools Page out for the Guide to asking 5 Important Questions

Please let me know what you learn.

As we move towards the ‘new normal’, our need to adapt the way we execute our work will demand an increase in our continuous improvement and innovation (CI&I) activity.

As you do this, I would encourage you to follow the logic I use for future state design – THINK TO S.E.E – Simple, Elegant and Effective. 

When you approach CI&I, the focus should always be on simplifying how we do our work – it is much easier to make things more complicated than it is to simply them.   Solutions should be elegant or well-designed following design thinking methodology.  And finally, it is critical that processes are effective in delivering internal and external customer value.   

Developing and executing future state design using the THINK TO S.E.E approach does take more thought and effort, but the effort will have a much higher rate of return.   Quoting Mark Twain – “If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter”. 

If you would be interested in attending a virtual skill development session on the THINK TO S.E.E methodology, please let me know. 

Keep improving. 

Scott